After several months of waiting I finally got my Google Voice account! It is a very similar product to what I am working on and allows me to see more of what our competitors are doing. Very cool stuff! And lots of fun building these kinds of apps. Try it out if you would like there is a widget on the right hand side of my blog that will connect us through Google Voice (It even transcribes everything so I can search it later… Very COOL!)
Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
Google Voice
Thursday, July 16th, 2009Getting MySQL to run on FreeBSD 7.0
Thursday, April 10th, 2008During my server migration, I decided that I was going to switch from five or six random Linux distributions to using a single operating system. My place of employment seems to have a fondness for FreeBSD so I decided to give it a whirl. Although very similar to the several Linux distributions I use, FreeBSD has some differences. First installing software, I have finally gotten accustom to apt-get on the Debian based distributions I use as well as YUM (Which is on the RedHat Linux variants) because FreeBSD uses an entirely different package management system I had to learn something new. (Which is always a good thing)
FreeBSD uses two different methods. I am going to focus on the Ports collection since this way seems to be the most flexible, I must warn you though, compiling everything can become a pain in the neck if you have a slow machine. Fortunately for me, all of the servers I am using in the Server Migration are new and quite fast.
The Ports collection is relatively easy to use. Simply go into the ports collection.
server# cd /usr/ports
Now you will need to find the package you want to install (I will forgo the instructions on how to do this, as I am assuming that you know how to do that already.) In my case I started with MySQL 5
server# cd databases/mysql50-server
server# make install clean
server# mysql_install_db
server# chown -R mysql:mysql /var/db/mysql
server# /usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe -user=mysql&
server# mysqladmin -u root password <password>
server# vi /etc/rc.conf
Now you will need to tell the server to automatically start the MySQL daemon when the computer restarts. Add the following line to your rc.conf file (Which you will be editing if you have followed the previous steps.)
mysql_enable=”yes”
There you go, as long as no error messages show up, your MySQL 5.0 server will be running and will be usable.
Server Migration
Thursday, April 10th, 2008I own a Utah web hosting business called Preciant Hosting. Recently I have started experiencing several problems with one of my servers. It would constantly go up and down. My monitoring software (Nagios for those that are interested) was showing that the server would be up for an hour or so, and then go down for three-four hours while I tried to get the data center technicians to reboot the machine. Being as how I provide services for several customers from that machine, this up and down time is NOT acceptable.
I had previously decided to purchase some servers (rather than use dedicated servers spread around the nation) and move into a local data center. Since I work for a company that provides web hosting and other data center services, (such as colocation, which is what I needed) I got some rack space in the Fibernet & Nethosting data center and ordered my servers.
The servers have finally started to come in and I am slowly setting them up and moving them into the data center. I am planning on sharing all of my wo’s involved in migrating all of my servers and I am also planning on sharing my solutions to the problems
Return often to find out about my trials and solutions.
CakePHP: Gift from Heaven, or from Hell?
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008My development activies have called on my skill and talent to quickly and efficiently learn new things. So it is with CakePHP, at work we have several projects that need to be completed quickly with out much hassle, after looking at several different options, we decided to use the CakePHP libraries. I quickly discovered that CakePHP has some awesome features that allow me to quickly and easily built website from scratch.
Changing auto_increment on MySQL
Thursday, December 6th, 2007From time to time, when programming with MySQL, I have needed to change the auto_increment value to something other than the default (Typically it starts counting with 1 and goes up from there). To change this, simply use the following command:
mysql> ALTER tablename AUTO_INCREMENT=new_number
There you go, it is that easy to change the auto increment value for MySQL.
NOTE: I have discovered that MySQL will not allow you to set the auto_increment value to a number smaller that what is currently set. The data must be truncated and then set to get it to work properly.
MMORPG Intelligent Load Leveling
Monday, November 5th, 2007Companies in the game development industry are constantly attempting to keep up with the demands of consumers to provide more elaborate environments to inhabit. Games such as EVE Online, World of WarCraft, Planeshift and The Lord of The Rings Online are fun and enjoyable, yet have huge limitations. (more…)
Cisco Password recovery
Saturday, October 27th, 2007I was given a Cisco router a few weeks back, so that I could practice for the Cisco CCNA exams. The only problem is that I had now idea what the passwords on it were. After some good old hard work, and lots of searching I finally figured out how to reset the password and set the router back to the defaults. This allowed me to start from a clean slate and start the process of learning how to manage and maintain a Cisco router. (more…)
Reset FreeBSD root password
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007I have always attempted to have strong secure passwords, I usually pick something 12-15 characters long with a mixture of letters (both uppercase and lowercase), number, and symbols all mixed together. This makes my password quite difficult to guess. One problem that I have found is that I don’t have to deal with my servers on a daily basis. Since my password are so complex, I usually forget what they are. Now, I simply keep a server log (a 3 ring binder) that keeps track of all my passwords. But until then, I kept needing to reset my passwords.
Fighting Spam
Thursday, July 19th, 2007I started having a lot of troubles with my mail server when it started getting spammed pretty bad. I have
Postfix using Amavis to push the email through ClamAV and SpamAssasin. My server was brought to it’s knees. It was running at 98-99% processor load and it would take hours for email to go through. So here is what I did to fix the problem: (more…)
